Recipe

This vinaigrette is rich and sweet from the sun-dried tomatoes, so you don’t need to use much of it. To use it like a pesto and make a pasta dish out of it, omit the vinegar, thin it down with more olive oil, and add pine nuts, sautéed zucchini, and chopped fresh basil.

Yield: 1½ cups

Ingredients

12 marinated sun-dried tomatoes

1 garlic clove, peeled and minced

1/3 cup balsamic vinegar

½ teaspoon salt

A few turns of freshly ground black pepper

½ cup grated Parmesan cheese

¼ cup olive oil

Directions

Toss everything but the olive oil into the bowl of a food processor (or a blender) fitted with a metal blade, and purée to a thick paste.

Continuing to run the machine, add the oil slowly through the feed tube or the lid of the blender. Taste for salt.

Notes

“I love basil. Just the smell of it. And there are so many types of basil. Thai basil. Lemon basil. Opal basil. My favorite is the one from France; the leaves are very, very tiny, but the flavor is much more intense. I like to make pesto with unusual basils, just to be different.”